


Live A Little

by mediocrityatbest



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, all the death actually happens prior to the story, if that helps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 07:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21132863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediocrityatbest/pseuds/mediocrityatbest
Summary: This is for Sanders Sides Spooky Month being hosted by @sanderssidescelebrations over on Tumblr!Day Four Prompt: Ghost!sideLogan only gets one day out of the year. He has to make it last.





	Live A Little

This time of year was, objectively speaking, the best.

Logan was not biased, don’t think that he would ever let his current circumstances affect his opinion. It was a simple fact that fall was the best time of year. The beautiful trees and the pleasant chill in the air and the smell of crisp early mornings were, objectively, some of the best things in life.

And Logan would know that because he had lost his life. About twenty years ago, and he won’t go anymore exact than that because he still looks like a twenty-something college kid, but he would digress. Logan knows these are the best aspects of life because they are the things he misses the most and also the things that he can feel the best even after death.

His liking this time of year has absolutely nothing to do with Halloween, or the thinning of the veil, or it being the only time of year he can be seen by everyone, or that he can feel things, or that people don’t run screaming from him when they see him. They actually congratulate him on such a realistic costume, and Logan has long since given up on trying to convince anyone he’s actually dead. They always think he’s inebriated or pulling some sort of prank. He doesn’t mind so much anymore. He’s just glad that he can hold any sort of conversation with someone who isn’t a particularly enlightened cat.

Things start to get fun every year around eight p.m. That’s when Logan becomes corporeal again, and also when he is finally able to be seen by the masses. So, as eight p.m. rolls around, Logan steps out of the stupid house he is confined to every other day of the year and begins walking.

His legs tingle like he’s been sitting cross-legged too long and now they’re coming awake again. He relishes in the feeling, even if it’s not pleasant. It’s something, and that’s a lot better than nothing. The wind batters his face and a beautifully orange leaf smack into the tacky blood pasting his hair down and sticks. He smiles, pulling it off and tossing it back to the elements. He watches as it whisks down the street in the first breeze he’s felt in a year. A few drops of rain land on his hand, so Logan tilts his head back and lets the rain sprinkle onto his face. After a year without even the slightest bit of liquid touching, the rain feels  _ exquisite _ . He fights the insane urge to giggle and allows himself a few seconds of basking in the rain. Then he composes himself and continues walking. As much as he’d love to drink in all these sensations forever, he only gets twelve hours. There is so much more he wants to do before this night is over.

There is a house about four blocks away. It is more of a mansion than a house, and nobody owns it. Students from the local college flock to it every Halloween for the biggest party that anyone in the state has. Logan knows, because even back in his day it was an impressive party. The police have a long standing deal with the college students: it doesn’t get too loud and nothing gets destroyed, nobody gets arrested. This, too, has been in effect since Logan was as young as he looks. The students had, of course, been banned before, but they kept coming back. Now the truce has been in place for over two decades. Logan’s never been more happy that a law can be so casually broken.

Logan only went to a few parties in his life (nowhere near enough, if you ask him now. He loves the socialization more than anything else.) They were all good parties for the time, but now is a whole new ball game. There are amazing lights and decorations and types of food he’s never seen before. People bring their handheld cellular phones with them everywhere, and it’s a technology Logan had never imagined in his life. They contain cameras, make calls, send written messages, access the internet (something Logan wishes to high heaven that he’d had in college), and so much more that is far beyond his comprehension, given his limited time to interact with them.

Even with all of that, all the crazy things he can’t even fathom having existed before, he loves these parties. He can drink (though never get drunk), he can eat (though he is never hungry), he can talk (and  _ be heard _ ), and he can touch others. Logan never realized how much he took his senses for granted until they were revoked like some cosmic joke. But for now, he has them. He can stew about not having them once they’re gone again, and he’s back to being no more than a semi-famous news story and The Poltergeist of Auburn Street.

Logan walks into the party and the very first thing he does is grab a cookie. It’s a simple little pumpkin, and the gel-like icing is dripping off slightly, but it is delicious. He purposely bumps into a few people as he makes his way around the already packed room. It is not yet eight thirty, and already ‘Spooky Scary Skeletons’ is blasting from the speakers. Strangers are making out in strange places, and Logan watches them for only a moment before turning away. He hadn’t really been a fan of such things when he was alive, either, and it is one societal expectation that he does not miss at all.

Logan mingles with the warm bodies around him until nine o’clock when he sees who he’s been waiting for: Patton Foster. Behind Patton walks Roman Prince, brandishing his smile like a weapon. The last person in, loitering in the door like a vampire, is Virgil Avery. They make the most interesting trio that Logan has ever seen, none of them have anything in common, and that probably has a lot to do with why he fits in with them so well.

“Lolo!” Patton cries and throws his arms around Logan’s neck as soon as he steps into his path. “How’ve you been? What have you been doing?” Patton is easily the most genuine person that Logan has ever met. When they met in Patton’s freshman year at this very party, Logan was just sitting on the stairs, watching. Patton had asked what was wrong like he’d known just from a glance, and they’d talked, and then he’d met the other two, and they all clicked together like puzzle pieces, separated years ago by an errant creator.

Somehow, it seemed fitting that Logan would make the best friends of his life after he died.

“Good, Patton. I’ve been good. Not doing much.” Logan wiggles out of Patton’s embrace, and Patton lets go quickly.

“Not doing much?” Virgil grumbles. “Wouldn’t you have seen the whole world by now, calculator watch?” Logan has no idea what that is supposed to mean - the nickname, not the sentence. What the cherry-covered fuck was a calculator watch?

“There is a lot more to the world than places, Virgil,” Logan says. They bump fists and then Roman drapes an arm around Logan’s shoulders.

“Where did you spend this year, again?” Roman asks, eyeing the crowd like a vulture. The first year Logan had met them, at the end of the night, all three of them had been devastated to find out that Logan didn’t go to their school. He told them he was traveling; all over the world. It was why he was never here longer than a night, and it was why they never saw him on campus.

“Australia,” Logan says. This is probably not where he told them he was going last year. He doesn’t remember where he told them going, only that it was far enough away they wouldn’t try to visit.

“What’s that like, kiddo?”

“Hot, dry. A surprising amount of deadly fauna, even knowing about it beforehand,” Logan says. He doesn’t want to be questioned about a place he’s never been, so he asks, “What sorts of things have been going on for you?”

“Nothing good,” Virgil says, but he looks too happy in his skeleton costume for that to be true.

“Stormcloud passed his biology exam,” Roman proclaims, loudly, in Logan’s ear. Logan leans more into the sound and the heat.

“Barely,” Virgil says, but there’s no venom in the word.

“But you did pass,” Logan says. He pauses and adds, “I loved biology in high school. It’s a lot different in college though.” Logan can’t even begin to guess how far the field has come since his most recent knowledge of it. He had been majoring in biology; he loved the field work involved.

“That’s the spirit!” Patton says. Virgil and Roman laugh. Logan groans. A pun. A halloween pun. A Halloween pun that just so happens to hinge on the thing Logan is. How Patton manages it, Logan hasn’t found out. He may be a witch. He may be psychic and not know it. Whatever the case, he’s using his power for puns. It really is such a Patton thing to do.

“I starred in the school’s production of  _ The Breakfast Club _ ,” Roman says. He puffs out his chest. They reach the drink table and everyone picks up something.

“A wonderful movie,” Logan says. “I didn’t know there was a play based on it.” Roman stares at him with outright incomprehension.

“So you get my 80s movie references, but you’ve never seen an Avengers movie? Or Tangled? Or-or even something nerdy like Interstellar?”

“I have read the Marvel comics,” Logan suggests. Roman rolls his eyes, and Logan surmises that is not quite considered the same. “And I have been meaning to watch Interstellar since you told me about it last year. Though I have absolutely no clue what Tangled is supposed to be.” He grins as Roman goes off on a tangent about all things Disney. It’s endearing, if obnoxious, Logan thinks as he makes eye contact with Virgil and Patton. All three of them devolve into laughter, but Roman keeps going, undeterred.

“And  _ Frozen _ ! Elsa’s going to be a lesbian, and the Prince was the bad guy-that’s how you know he was never a real prince. A real prince like myself would never commit a betrayal like that! And what about  _ The Princess and The Frog _ ? An underrated masterpiece to be sure, but stunning! Everything about it was amazing! And there’s…” Logan’s not sure if Roman’s taken a breath since he started talking, and he’s only understanding about a third of the words he’s said.

Roman is the easiest to rile into such an impassioned state. He loves so much so fiercely that anything could set him off. Less often to see passionate is Patton. Not excited or even elated about something, but to see Patton with a bright gleam in his eye as he talks until there are no words left and you can feel his very own passion in your soul is beautiful. Least often to feel so strongly about something is Virgil. Logan has only provoked him into one passion-fueled rant (about caterpillars, of all things. Odd, but fitting.), but he is just as capable of  _ feeling _ and  _ expressing _ as either of the others.

Passion, Logan has found, is the heart and soul of life. Nothing quite compares to watching someone breathe life into something just from their sheer love of the subject.

But dancing comes close.

“Want to dance?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at Roman. Roman grins, takes a breath, and then extends a hand toward Patton.

“Padre? Would you do me this honor?” Patton giggles and jumps up.

“C’mon, Virge! It’ll be fun!” Patton and Roman are bouncing excitedly - in entirely different ways. Patton’s is a sort of rocking back forth from his heels to his toes over and over, as though he cannot possibly not move, even when he’s not walking. Roman’s is more of a jump, bending his knees slightly and then springing back up, so eager to get moving that he won’t wait for the time.

“I don’t know, guys.” Virgil withdraws into his hoodie slightly. Logan admires the patchwork design, something so lovingly hand-crafted that it could never really be replicated. “Dancing’s not really my  _ thing _ .”

“Come on, dark and stormy, nothing bad is going to happen,” Roman prods. He starts to pull closer to the other dancing people. Virgil doesn’t look completely convinced, and there’s only one thing Logan can advise here.

“Live a little,” he says, and he smiles because Patton would love the pun if he knew, and then he takes his own advice and for exactly one night, Logan lives. At the end of the night, he’ll tell his friends good-bye, regale them with ideas of the next far-off place he’s heading for, and then he’ll go back to his dilapidated house and come up with new ways to keep from going insane until next year’s Halloween party when he gets to see them all again. But until that happens, Logan won’t think about it. He takes Virgil’s hand, draws him into the crush of moving, breathing,  _ living _ bodies, and they live.


End file.
